Tag: sunlight

I want you to see me; but I want to be left alone. I want you to call me; and I don’t want to answer the phone. I want you to knock at my door; and I want to hide under the covers. Invite me to your party; so I can tell you I have other plans. Give me a job; so I can spit in your face and tell you I’m entitled to more. Let me talk to you through a computer; so I don’t have to look you in the eye. Let me forget what it is to be alive; so that I can escape into a lush dream where I can control when the sun sets.

Even though I know it, I can’t stop. I’m addicted to it: the image of myself. And even though the image itself is not static but fluid and evolving, I still dig my nails bloody and grind my teeth dull until it makes me sick.

One moment he is a writer somewhere in Westchester wearing an old charcoal cardigan, collecting baby dreads of lint, sitting at an old oak wood desk in the middle of the night tapping away at his typewriter smoking Marlboros and drinking Oban. The next he is a talented writer-slash-director careening down Topanga turns in APC jeans and a black Steve Alan dress shirt and vest helming an entire set of crewmembers and actors destined for top tier festivals and after-parties. And yet he is also a world traveler in cargo shorts and an old plaid short-sleeved button-down, a Nat-Geo freelance photographer living in small villages in South Africa and each photo he’d take would be laced with a thick cream of social justice. And yet still he is a farmer in thrift-store couture watching the sun come up over the mountains in Montana drinking coffee in the early morning standing over his crops and admiring the milky layer of fog between the ground and the horizon.

Someone asked me what I was doing here in California earlier today and I didn’t know how to answer him. I never do. How can I subscribe to one path or ideological destination if even my own ego won’t agree with itself? And how can I possibly make sense of that lack of clarity to anyone else? In my head I often compare myself with other, more “successful” creatives and I wonder if they have a similar fractured understanding of themselves or if they see one clear, concise image.

But maybe yet the question lies elsewhere. Maybe the question is can I transcend those images? Can I let it all go? Can I drop the need to fulfill my ego? To not worry about what you might think of me? Can I not impress you? Can I be imperfect? Can I be messy? Can I always just be “figuring it out?” Can I live without judgement on how I’m living? Can I take me as I am and know that is enough? Can I love that person beyond the constant striving and trying and aiming and goalsetting? Can I look him in the eyes and say, “it’s okay, you’re exactly where you need to be.”

In March of 2015 I decided to go camping alone in Joshua Tree. I’d just seen “Tracks” (2013) depicting the true story of Robyn Davidson and her solo “1,700-mile trek across the deserts of west Australia”[1] with four camels and her dog, Diggity. Earlier that year I crossed the United States from New York to California — I employed both a car and a friend’s company for the journey — and felt the need to get back on the road. “Tracks” gave me the motivation I needed plus I was in desperate need of some quiet, solitary beauty.

However, in the weeks leading up to the trip, I developed a great fear over the journey. I was heading into Joshua Tree’s backcountry alone for the first time and I had no idea what to expect. I’d camped alone only once before that — along the sandy beaches of the Outer Banks off the coast of North Carolina — and suddenly I felt completely out of my depth.

I imagined all kinds of things. My mind leapt into gear and found this a perfect opportunity to try and scare me out of going. I spent hours deep diving through horror stories on YouTube. I imagined a desert floor crawling with rattlesnakes, tarantulas, scorpions all out to kill me and by the slim chance I didn’t get bit by something I’d surely get turned around somewhere and die of heat exposure and dehydration. They’d find my sun-dried lifeless body a half-mile from civilization and the Rangers would shake their heads, chuckle and say, “City folk.”

And so in preparation I learned how to use a compass[2], what foods to pack, and how much water to bring. I researched the animal life in the area and how to stay away from them. I took notes. I bought maps. I was prepared.

Still, the whole drive out there on I-10 my heart was pounding: Why was I even doing? Had I death wish? How had other people survived this ordeal? What would my movie be called? “18 Hours?” Would Danny Boyle direct it, too?

But then something strange happened.

Almost as soon as I’d entered the park and walked into the welcome center, all that fear I’d had simply vanished. My heart slowed and my vision and breathing returned to normal. I was overcome by the incomprehensible majestic beauty of the park all around me and I’d easily surrendered over to the experience of actually being there, fully present for whatever adventures actually awaited.

My mind likes to tell me life is a scary place when, most often, if I just put my feet on the ground, I can see how beautiful it all really is.

And, unfortunately, I never saw any rattlesnakes, tarantulas, or scorpions.

I am formally applying for the position of goat herder within your company. Do you have a company? LLC? I couldn’t find any mention of you on Google. No matter either way as I am still interested.

Unfortunately, I currently do not have any education or training within the field of goat herding but, you see, I’m looking for a new line of work and since I don’t really know where to start, I figured I might as well try to do something that looked fulfilling from a movie I saw once.

Plus I like goats. Or at least I think I do. I think I petted one once at a petting zoo when I was ten and even though that was — years ago it was a defining moment in my formative years I like to think.

Maybe you’re confused as to why someone with my formal corporate training in marketing and advertising — twelve years of graphic design and art direction, an excellent portfolio working for some of the best brands in the business — would want to leave that salary and herd goats?

Well, you see, this isn’t the future I was promised and since, as it seems currently, that all bets are off, I figure I might as well put all my talent and drive into something a little more fulfilling. Something that has a lot of hours outdoors, working with animals, enjoying the elements. Because if I have to sit in a chair for eight hours one more day I’m afraid that I might implode or spontaneously combust and when they’re selling museum tickets to my mummified room and tourists are standing outside just beyond the velvet rope they’ll see a little charred artist’s recreation of me and the Tour Guide will say:

I’ve decided this morning that I need to go thirty days without Television.

Well, the idea actually popped into my consciousness during my meditation like a microcosmic big bang[1] so I don’t know that I can fully take credit for such a novel and totally unique idea.

“Why would you ever?” You ask with jaws agape and brows furrowed like Mark Wahlberg beaming judgement upon me from your third eyes, “There’s so much good TV.”

And you would be right.

Even amongst my screenwriter and cinephile friends, “The trends are moving towards television,” they say, “That’s where all the good writing is these days.” Pause, exhale, inhale and finishing with, “Movies are all franchises and superheroes, television is where the stories are. If you’re gonna get a job, I’d look into television.”

And they would be right, too.

And I would be lying if I said I didn’t love television but here’s the thing:

When does so much good television become too much good television?

At what point do trends reach their tipping point and become obsession? Obstruction? Oppression?

I’m truly asking because I don’t know the answers.

***

I stare at a computer screen for a living. It’s what I’ve done my entire adult life. College—just before the social media explosion—was maybe the last time in my life I was able to go a day without looking at a screen. Since then it’s been all-screens all-day-long and now I routinely shuffle between my Macbook Pro laptop, iPhone 7+, and 42” Vizio that I tell myself isn’t really a screen because it’s a television and TV screens have been around forever so that’s really okay. It’s been grandfathered in, I reason.

But then yesterday while doing work on one of the aforementioned screens I had what’s called an ocular migraine. I had to look it up because, although I’d experienced this phenomena in the past, I never knew what the hell was happening. It went down like this:

Suddenly, without any warning, my vision went askew and a jagged bright spot that looked kind of like a circular version of Zeus’s lighting rod appeared in the center of my vision and I couldn’t see anything directly in front of me. I couldn’t read or do my work. It was painless, however, semi-alarming. Google gave me an answer that was sort of satisfactory, but then I started thinking about how most nights, by the time I’m ready to try and fall asleep[2], I’ll have a dull throb behind my eyes where the retinal wall meets the optic nerve. And then, almost predictably, that existential itch arose in the back of my brain:

What if this was more than just an isolated incident?

***

Luke Storey, in his illuminating health and wellness podcast The Lifestylist, talks about eyesight in several episodes. In his interview with James Swanwick, they discuss the effect that blue light (screens) have on our eyes and brains. And in his discussions with Nadine Artemis they talk about the necessary health benefits of Sun exposure, Sun gazing, and even the Sun’s abilities to heal certain ailments.

So what am I getting at?

I’m just spitballing here, but I’m starting to think that maybe we weren’t engineered by nature to sit in front of a screen all day. Is it possible that we evolved as creatures of the sun and the moon and that by denying ourselves that relationship we’re doing damage to ourselves?

I don’t know. But here’s what I do know:

I do know that screens give off blue light and blue light tells my brain that it’s daytime even if it’s nighttime and if I stare at too many screens before bedtime I can’t sleep because my anxiety levels are raised and if I can’t sleep my body and mind aren’t restoring themselves and when I’m not restored I’m tired and when I’m tired I need energy and I can’t focus and my mood plummets and my emotions become volatile and I end up drinking too much coffee and too much sugar adding to my anxiety levels and my head and chest will start to hurt and—

Point made.

***

Okay so let me try and tie all of this together.

I need to earn a living so I can’t stop looking at my computer, and I need to answer the phone when it rings so I can’t eliminate that screen either. At least not entirely.

I can, however, decide not to watch television for thirty days to see what it does. Just as an experiment. I can decide to go outside for that hour and soak up some much needed sunlight or read a book or maybe even have a conversation with someone.

Mostly, I want to do it because I have no idea how I’ll feel after thirty days of unplugging from it all. Truthfully, I don’t even want to do it and I even have a strong, however irrational, fear that says I can’t do it and that it’s simply impossible and I’ll be missing out on life.

These days I find myself averse to all forms of addiction and when I become aware of them I try and build some mindfulness around them. The idea of needing to see the latest episode of Whatever-the-fuck isn’t a virtue I’d like to nurture.

And getting back to that existential itch:

Maybe I just don’t want to be addicted to someone else’s story anymore.

Maybe I’d like to invest that time into my own.

[1] Yes, I’m referring to my ideas as miniature big bangs. No I don’t really understand what the Big Bang theory really is but as a writer I reserve the right to use whatever is floating atop the cultural zeitgeist as I please. In other words, get past it.

[2] Sleep is another topic altogether we’ll discuss at some point in the future.